Heart-Healthy Slow Cooker Chili

My Dad is a big guy. He’s 6’2″ and he enjoys his food. When he comes to my house he has some pretty high expectations of what he’s going to be eating. A home-cooked meal is always appreciated and even more so since my mom passed away. The last thing he wants to hear me say is “Hey Dad! I cooked you up a healthy meal today!” To him, that means bland and unexciting. I’ve found some easy ways to turn our family’s favorite dishes into heart-healthy dishes and have them still taste great.

One of my favorite meals to make up for parties and get-togethers is chili. I mean, seriously, could any one dish be more versatile? Serve it on it’s own with some cheese and onions, on top of baked potatoes, hot dogs, burgers, nachos…the possibilities are endless!

This chili recipe is loaded with good-for-the-heart veggies and tastes amazing! Simple changes like choosing extra lean meat and low or no-sodium veggies can turn a hearty dish like chili into a heart-healthy dish just like that. I headed to Save Mart to pick up everything I needed for this recipe and I was super pleased with how easy they made it! The products were clearly labeled and made selected heart-healthy ingredients a breeze!

When it’s so easy to make a family favorite better for everyone – why wouldn’t you?

Heart disease runs in my family. Runs rampant in my family really. My Dad lost his dad when he was only 11 years old to a heart attack. My Uncles and my Dad have all had heart attacks, most have multiple stents. It’s pretty serious. I know that heart disease risks increase dramatically if someone in your family has heart problems and so that means serious business for my two little ones. The good news is that there are simple changes you can make to your lifestyle to reduce the risk and a heart-healthy diet is one of them. What family favorite dish do you think you could makeover to be more heart-healthy?

I love heart healthy anything! Especially something like this, that I could make for my parents and they’d never know. They’re like children – tell them it’s healthy and they say “ew” but they need to eat better!

I substitute ground turkey a lot in recipes like this. We eat hardly any red meat. I really can’t tell the difference and have gotten so used to it that when I cook red meat now, I’m not sure I like the smell. Thanks for the yummy looking chili recipe.
KC

Made this for dinner tonight and it was delicious! I’m not normally much of a chilli person, but my husband is, so I figured I’d try it out – so glad I did! We also substituted for ground turkey. Thanks for sharing!

My husband got 2 stents this past summer and we have always eaten heart healthy. I had to take it a step further and no canned beans as the sodium is still to high when you put it all together. So I have a pot of dried beans cooking right now for the morning to throw the rest of your ingredient together. I plan on making a extra large batch to freeze. Thank you for the great recipe

I think I have an average slow cooker – but couldn’t add the black beans in as it was nearly overflowing. I don’t mind buying a bigger one – just thought others might find it useful if they have 2 sizes – use the big one :-) Slow cooking as I type so I will let you know how it tastes this evening! Thank you for the recipe!